A Southern Writer Who Knows What Goes Bump in the Night

success

Hey there, friends and fans! I have had an incredible week, and yesterday provided me with quite a surreal experience to round it out. One of my friends and coworkers received their copy of my recent publication from Amazon. The second she ordered it she asked me to sign it when she got it. Of course, I agreed. I’ve done book signings before – I’ve even signed books with Jeffery Deaver – but this was different. Before, I’d signed my writings in various journals and publications where my work appeared alongside other authors and artists. But this one was mine.

I was handed a book entirely of my work and asked to personalize it. I’m honestly still beside of myself from the experience. It really hit me at that point just how blessed and lucky I am. God blessed me with the talent to create, to write, to paint with words – and then He gave me a way to share it with the world. Those things alone are incredible. I couldn’t imagine asking for more.

Then He gave me more anyway. He gave me people who believe in me, who support me. Throughout my life I’ve had an amazing support system, from my mother, grandmother and family to my friends and all of you guys. I’ve always been unbelievably thankful for the network of love and support that I’ve had, but it really hit me last night just how important those things are.

Having gifts and talents and publications and inspiration are all amazing, but without a support network it can all fall apart. The best artists and authors in the world would be so much dust in the wind now if there was no support for their work. It is of utmost importance for a creative individual to have support. There are countless examples throughout history of creatives without a support network who lose all faith and inspiration.

I am beyond blessed to say this is not so for me. I can never thank you all enough for the support you have provided me. It is more clear to me than ever that a support system can truly change the life of a creative individual. As I’ve said before, creating an original piece of work, of any kind, is more than just putting words to paper or paint to canvas or plugging notes on an instrument. It is, quite literally, baring a part of yourself, a bit of your soul, for the world to see. It’s never easy. But a good support system can change that. Knowing there are people out there eager to receive your work and support your efforts makes a big difference.

My point, I guess, is that everyone should support artists. If you find a piece of work that you enjoy, that resonates with you, that makes you feel something – tell the artist. Give them a review, give them a kind word, share it with friends, shout it from the rooftops and let the world know. Knowing their work is appreciated can and does make all the difference to an artist who has put themselves out there.

Speaking from experience, it makes you feel great knowing someone is excited for your work. So I thank you all again, and I encourage you to make sure you tell your favorite artists what it is you like about their work. It will mean more than you know.

Once again, I thank you all for your support. My collection is, of course, available for purchase from Amazon. I look forward to sharing more work and more experiences with you all soon. Keep your eyes open for any upcoming news, and if you’d like to purchase my collection, I’ll put a link at the bottom of this post. If you get a copy, don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or social media in general. They help exponentially, especially for indie authors.

As always guys, feel free to reach out to me with any comments or questions. I look forward to hearing from you all!

Mondays suck. Lets face it. But that doesn’t have to stop us from doing great things. We, as artists and writers, really need to give ourselves a bit of a schedule to follow. Some authors will find themselves needing a more strict and rigid schedule. Throughout history there are some authors who have stated that they wouldn’t let themselves do anything else until they had typed X amount of pages or written X amount of words per day. This can be quite a daunting idea for some us and for others it can honestly be nearly impossible. If we don’t have a set schedule at work it can be very hard to try and have a set schedule with out writing. This can lead us to breaking any type of schedule we may try to set. That’s not good at all.

Other of us (myself included at times) don’t like trying to demand ourselves to meet a certain deadline. Granted we may sometimes be under contract and actually have a deadline, but that doesn’t mean that we can just force ourselves to vomit out a certain amount of work just because it’s what we say we need to do. Part of this can be fixed with the inspiration I so love to write about. Even while typing this I am listening to music on my old Mp3 player to make sure I stay motivated despite the feeling of inspiration that I’ve had today. I have used the music on this player to help me write and focus on my craft for so long that I’ve had to change players three of four times because I’ve worn some of the others out and just ran out of room on one.

But we do want to continue performing our craft at the level we are now and we do want to improve. We may find it hard, or even impossible to do that if we let the world get in the way of our productivity. Yes, it’s Monday, and yes that means we are going back to work and/or school and are feeling the typical mourning over the loss of the weekend, but Mondays can be positive as well. Mondays can symbolize the beginning of a whole new week of work. This can be the week where we tackle that hard chapter and vow to gain something from it. Or maybe this is the week we complete that particularly hard painting or song. Maybe it’s even just the week we convince ourselves to pick up the tools of our trade and produce SOMETHING. Mondays can be real downers. They can kill our spirit and motivation and bring us so low that we don’t even have the ability to produce anything at all that week. But they can also mean a lot. They can be the day we start the ending to our latest novel, or start that new painting, or the day we start writing our own music instead of just learning what has already been done. Monday may come at the worst possible time, but it can also bring us a never-ending realm of possibilities. Don’t waste them!!!!

Hey guys, I am deeply sorry for my absence, but with school, work, life, and all of the stresses I’ve been really stretched thin. But I somehow found the time to finish this collection and put it on Amazon! Please feel free to lend this book from your device to another device; I’m really jut trying to get my name out there and showcase my work as much as possible. Anyway, enjoy!

Hey there followers and fans, I just wanted to let you know that I am slowly clawing my way up the ladder of publicity. I now have an official Amazon author page to go along with my first self-published work. Feel free to check it out! https://www.amazon.com/author/dameanmathews

I want to start here by thanking everyone who has supported me to no end. Your loyalty and guidance has meant more to me than you will ever know. I love you all and I want to remind you that without you none of this would be possible. I thank God for giving me this gift for words that I hope to use to make a name for myself in the world and hopefully inspire countless generations of artists to carry on the great and noble work. Thank you all again.

From there I go on to make my announcement. I have finally self-published my first major short story. It went live on Amazon Kindle sites worldwide a little before 1 A.M. this morning. Thank you all for being here to celebrate with me. I hope you will all follow the link and get your copy of this story that I hope is the beginning of a hugely influential and amazing career. Thank you all again, and as always feedback is more than welcome.

Have you ever let someone read your work and asked them for feedback and just be mesmerized by what they said? More specifically have you ever listened to their suggestions and just thought “that changes the whole meaning and purpose of the story, why would I do that”?

Those situations are among some of the ones you have to be most cautious about when writing. Your work is going to have to be something you make your own, no matter how different that makes it from someone else’s and no matter how many people you encounter who may not exactly prefer your style. There are over 7 billion people on this planet and there is certain to be at least one other person in the world who will love your work for what it is. That is your audience. That’s not to say that that is necessarily the person you are writing for, by any means. You are always writing first and foremost for yourself. The work you do is yours to do. The idea came to you, after all, didn’t it?

That is one of my biggest purposes with this post; to remind you all that your work is yours. I can never emphasize that enough. So many times young authors meet resistance or differences of opinion regarding their work and they just give up their ideas to conform to those of others. Originality is one of the most important things to strive for when it comes to the craft of writing. It has been said by many that there are no new stories, just new ways to tell them, and to an extent that may be true. But it is our job, or if you prefer, our blessing, to give every story a new twist and make it our own.

No one else can write our work for us. That is why the ideas came to us. They are our own, and it is our duty to write them and spread them to the world. That is why it is so important for us to not allow ourselves or our ideas to be compromised by the thoughts and opinions of others. They can’t write our work for us, if they could the ideas would have come to them and not us. Granted that is not to say that we should just ignore and blow off all criticism and feedback. We can’t do that either. The key is to find the proper median, and this time, that line is a bit more prominent than others. The limits are similar for every writer in this respect, if they hope to remain unique and individual and not just generic and over-used.

The line is really quite rock solid, but as usual is never as simply cut-and-dry as some may prefer. We must listen to our feedback, look at what we know about our work, and examine the work using the knowledge of our intentions and the thoughts of others. After this we must use our conclusions to either keep, tweak or change our work while keeping both our own wishes in mind and the opinions of our audience, but no matter what we absolutely can not change the real essence of our work. If we compromise our work by making it what someone else wants and losing what we want then we have wasted our gift and really compromised the sanctity of the craft itself. I will write more on this subject and a lot about maintaining the sanctity of literature with my next post. I hope this has been helpful.